PeaceTech Summit: Engineering and Technology for Enduring Peace

The National Academy of Engineering and the U.S. Institute of Peace hosted a PeaceTech Summit: "Engineering Durable Peace" on September 19, 2014.

The summit brough together corporate and government officials, engineers, technologists and NGO leaders to look at how tech is being used in conflict zones and asked, “Why aren’t we doing more in conflict prevention?” The event also launched the PeaceTech Lab, a new organization dedicated to developing and deploying technologies, media and data for conflict management and peacebuilding.

Speeches

PeaceTech Summit Introductory Remarks

United States Institute of Peace

It is my pleasure to join you and the Institute at this PeaceTech Summit today.

We have chosen the theme of this Summit, “Engineering Durable Peace,” with careful deliberation. Its central premise and that of the Roundtable is that engineering, science, and technology can be valuable assets to the peace building process. To appreciate the nature of these assets, we need to understand what they, how they were created, and the roles that science and engineering play in them.

The essence of science is discovery and understanding of the world around us; science is all about getting the understanding right. The essence of engineering is creating solutions to problems of people and society; engineering is all about getting solutions that work. And technology, as it is commonly used today, is a catchall term used to describe a technical outcome derived from many areas, often including ...
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